Street Fighter V Update Installed Hidden Rootkits on PCs (theregister.co.uk)

Capcom's latest update for Street Fighter V was installing a secret rootkit on PCs. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes The Register: This means malicious software on the system can poke a dodgy driver installed by Street Fighter V to completely take over the Windows machine. Capcom claims it uses the driver to stop players from hacking...to cheat. Unfortunately, the code is so badly designed, it opens up a full-blown local backdoor... it switches off a crucial security defense in the operating system, then runs whatever instructions are given to it by the application, and then switches the protection back on
Friday Capcom tweeted "We are in the process of rolling back the security measures added to the PC version of Street Fighter V." This prompted one user to reply, "literal rootkits are the opposite of security measures."

Comments

This should be the death of Capcom

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a fool would install a game made by them after this.

Re:This should be the death of Capcom

[El Lobo]

You mean, nobody is installing Sony software these days after the rootkit incident 2012? Right.

Re:This should be the death of Capcom

[donaldm]

You mean, nobody is installing Sony software these days after the rootkit incident 2012? Right.

The Sony rootkit scandal was 2005 and was instigated by BMG who were in the process of being merged by Sony, consequently Sony took the blame. See the following for more details. Yes the root-kit was a stupid thing to do but you would think that people would also blame the operating system and virus protection software for allowing this to happen.

I do understand Capcom were trying to stop people from cheating but there are much more acceptable ways although the more you try to prevent someone from cheating the more you penalise the honest player. The bottom line is if someone is determined to cheat they will find a way and the only way to reduce this is "Don't play with cheats."

Re:This should be the death of Capcom

[Calydor]

You mean like Windows 10 and updates?

Re:STOP!!

[epyT-R]

Because people want to play video games..

Poaching

[darkain]

I know ya'll in the tech industry love to poach employees from other companies... But REALLY Capcom!? Did you have to hire that guy from Sony !?!?

Re: Adding Capcom to tech boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need to be doing is getting executives arrested for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That awful law has been used to prosecute hackers and hobbyists for much more minor things than this, and has been twisted enough to fit various cases that there's more than enough precedent now.

Re:Who decides that

[gweihir]

I doubt that. Massive screw-ups like these are usually a team effort. You know, "engineers" that cannot explain the feature well or do not really understand it themselves, "managers" that make decisions without a clue about what they decide on, and so on. I have seen this numerous times in action. It is really quite fascinating to watch how dysfunctional most/all corporate decision-making processes are in large corporations.